American Spectator

The American Spectator is a conservative political magazine founded by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. It is most famous for its attacks on the Clinton administration in the 1990s, including the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded Arkansas Project. It is operated by the nonprofit American Spectator Foundation, Inc.

From The Power of Nightmares: ... neo-conservative magazine ... set up what was called the Arkansas Project to vilify then President Bill Clinton. The principal character at the center of this project was David Brock, who subsequently recanted his allegations, and refers to the project now as "political terrorism".

Editor Tyrrell travelled to Kazakhstan in 1999, along with several other conservative journalists, with his travel expenses paid for by the Carmen Group, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm paid by the authoritarian Kazakh government for PR work. Kazakhstan's president Nursaltan Nasarbayev had recently barred his most viable opponent from contesting a presidential election and shortly after sent the opponent into exile. Tyrell, contradicting the opinion of human rights groups and the US State Department, provided a substantially upbeat assessment as to the state of freedom of expression in Kazakhstan in a Washington Times op-ed after he returned from his trip. Neither Tyrell nor the other conservative journalists who reported on Kazakhstan disclosed that their expenses for the trip had been paid by the Carmen Group.

Contact details
1611 North Kent Street Suite 901 Arlington, Virginia 22209 Phone: (703) 807-2011 Fax: (703) 807-2013 Email: AmSpec AT spectator.org Web: http://www.spectator.org

Related SourceWatch articles

 * R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
 * Richard Mellon Scaife

External resources

 * The American Spectator at the Wikipedia.
 * Ken Silverstein, "Turkmenistan: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship" (New York: Random House, 2008).

External articles

 * Jonathan Broder and Joe Conason, "The American Spectator's funny money", Salon.com, June 8, 1998.
 * " 'Arkansas Project' Led to Turmoil and Rifts", Washington Post, May 2, 1999.
 * Byron York, "The Life and Death of The American Spectator", The Atlantic, November 2001.
 * Ken Silverstein, "Plenty of Loopholes in New Lobbying Regulations,", "Harper's Magazine," January 11, 2007.